


Multitasking

by anarchetypal



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, GTA AU, M/M, very vague drug use mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 01:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4081456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchetypal/pseuds/anarchetypal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re on the run from the cops when Michael says, “Can I talk to you?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Multitasking

**Author's Note:**

> just doing some cross-posting from my writing/inspiration blog here: http://anarchetypal.tumblr.com/

They’re on the run from the cops when Michael says, “Can I talk to you?”

It’s almost enough to make Geoff stop running. Instead, he pants out, “What?  _Now?”_

Michael’s shrug is a quick, rolling twitch of his upper body; his sneakers slap the pavement hard and he takes the lead, directing them into an alley to ditch the approaching sirens in the back streets. “Whenever,” he says, a little short of breath but holding up well, considering how long they’ve been running for.

Here’s something Geoff’s figured out over the years: sometimes you have to have conversations in the moments you can partially steal away, and maybe that’s especially true when you’re on the run from the cops.

“Now’s fine,” he says as they slow down, breaths clouding in the cold night air. He puts his hands on his knees, listening with a practiced ear for sirens, for helicopter blades.

Michael peers around the corner of the building they’re behind and then leans against the bricked wall. “So, last week—”

“Okay, wait, I’m regretting this now. This could wait.”

Michael grins at him. “Boss.”

“Too out of breath to have a conversation,  _so_  sorry, we’re gonna have to put this off.” Sirens again, closer; Geoff’s almost relieved that they have to start running again, and for a minute there’s just the sound of their shoes against the asphalt.

But Michael’s stubborn. “You’re getting worked up over nothing,” he starts, and Geoff has to focus on his breathing to keep from having an existential crisis while they’re on the run from the police.  _Another_  existential crisis, because he had a few of those last week after they—

"Nothing?” he echoes incredulously.

That’s enough to make Michael pause, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven footsteps. “Well,” he allows finally, quietly, “not  _nothing_.”

Geoff takes the lead now, out onto the main street; he has to resist the urge to cover his face every time they pass under a street light. He cuts them across six lanes from sidewalk to sidewalk and they slide down a graveled embankment to take cover under a highway bridge.

Sirens fade off, far away and muted now by the occasional car rumbling past overhead. It’s real late at night, but Los Santos is active at all hours. Geoff leans against a thick cement bridge support post, breathing hard, while Michael kicks around a few used needles and pieces of trash. “So.”

And Geoff doesn’t want to have this conversation, which is why he didn’t say anything last week, the morning after, when he woke up and rolled over and saw Michael sleeping near-naked next to him, little bruises scattered around his body like fucking shame constellations. Geoff remembers bits and pieces of the night—getting drunk,  _real_  drunk, alone, in the big penthouse, Michael showing up, a back-and-forth of teasing that Geoff couldn’t take as a joke anymore, couldn’t,  _couldn’t_. 

After that the memory dissolves into heat and bed sheets, and Michael gasping, and Michael trying to get him to “ _say_  something, Geoff, Jesus,” and Michael screwing his eyes shut and coming all over Geoff’s hand with a choked sound.

The thing is, as much as he wants to pretend the night didn’t happen, he still wishes he remembers more.

“I was drunk,” he says, voice ragged, throat sore with too many freezing air breaths, after the silence has stretched too thin between them. “I got drunk, and I took advantage—”

“Geoff.”

“—and it was  _stupid_ , and I should have apologized—”

“ _Geoff_.”

"I let a bunch of joking flirting get out of hand,” he says, and Michael mutters something that makes him stop, makes him turn, brow furrowed. “What?”

It’s dark under the bridge, but Geoff’s eyes adjusted a while ago, and there’s tepid light streaming in from far-off streetlamps. Michael’s turned towards the light enough for Geoff to see a faint flush high on his cheeks. Maybe it’s from all the running, but Michael’s staring down at the ground now. “I said,” Michael mutters, stuffing his hands into his pockets, “ _I_  didn’t think it was a joke.”

Geoff can’t pretend to have heard him wrong. Still, “What?” he repeats, and it’s like the tightness in his chest that’s been there for the past week is winding up further and blooming outwards all at the same time.

Michael kicks at a piece of broken glass, and it goes skittering off into the darkness. “I wanted to talk to you because I wanted to ask if we could do it again.”

Geoff opens his mouth, lips already forming another ‘what’ like a fucking broken record, but Michael’s getting wound up now, and nothing really makes him stop when he’s like this until he’s run out of steam.

“You fucking  _took advantage_  of me?” Michael says, and he’s laughing, incredulous. “You think I’d let you do something I didn’t want you to do? You think I’d let  _anybody_ do  _anything_  to me I didn’t want them to? Sorry, boss, but I’d have kicked your drunk ass to shit if you did something I didn’t like.”

It’s Geoff’s turn to try to break in. “Michael.”

"You put your hands on me, and I thought, _fucking finally_. Because I’d been dropping hints like actual fucking bombs, they weren’t even hints, they were like straight-up blatant come-ons, and you thought we were joking around?”

"Michael—”

“Then in the morning you wouldn’t fucking talk to me, and you wouldn’t  _look_  at me,” Michael says, and his voice is getting small again. “So, what, is that what this is? Am I your drunken mistake and we need to bury it?” He kicks, again, at bits of broken bottles, shattered needles, the remnants of Los Santos’s indulging addicts. “You need to tell me what to do here, Geoff, because I am out of ideas. You need to tell me what to do. You need to  _look at me_.”

And Geoff is. He’s looking at Michael, but Michael’s still staring at the ground, taking in breaths too quick like he’s about to get worked up all over again, and Geoff has to stop that from happening or he’ll never get a word in edgewise.

So he takes the few steps he needs to in order to close the distance between them, and he curls his hands into the lapels of Michael’s jacket and tugs him in and kisses him slow to Los Santos’s soundtrack of police sirens and tires humming against the pavement.

And for a moment, Michael is very, very still.

Then he’s pushing forward, grabbing at Geoff with a sort of desperate fumbling that makes Geoff shudder in relief, in  _Thank God_ , in  _I didn’t lose him, I didn’t lose him, I didn’t lose him_.

A long couple of minutes stretch on like that for a year, needy sounds coming intermittently from them both, and Geoff’s stone-cold sober and he’s going to remember every goddamn detail of this.

When his phone goes off, he manages to work a hand into his pocket and silence it before it totally ruins the mood.

Michael’s phone goes off a minute later, and Geoff can feel the annoyed shift of his body as he silences his, too.

When  _both_  of their phones go off at once another minute later, they swear in unison and break away. Geoff hears Michael arguing with Ray in the few seconds before he answers his own phone, cradling it carelessly against his ear as Jack demands to know where the hell they are.

It takes some time to relay the information, because Geoff can’t keep his eyes off Michael—the flush on his cheeks now spread down to his neck, the way he keeps licking at his lower lip, the way he can’t keep still while he’s talking to Ray, voice a high, agitated thing, the way he keeps stealing glances at Geoff.

"Jack’s coming around with a car in five minutes,” Geoff says when they’ve both hung up.

“Yeah, Ray’s coming on his motorcycle right now.” Michael looks like he wants to make the most of those five minutes, but it’s probably for the best that he keeps his hands safely in his pockets.

“So,” Geoff says, and the air is cold and dry and thick with promise.

Michael grins. It’s a mixture of the way he looks right when he’s about to throw a grenade and the way he looks when he’s just blown something up big-time: excited and deeply, deeply satisfied. “I’ll have him drop me off at your place.”


End file.
